The Honor Code: How Moral Revolutions Happen. This item is unavailable.The Honor Code: How Moral Revolutions Happen

Honour emerges at the centre of our modern world in Kwame Anthony Appiah's The Honor Code. Over the last few centuries, new democratic movements have led to the emancipation of women, slaves and the oppressed. What drove these modern changes, Appiah argues, was not imposing legislation from above but harnessing the ancient power of honour from within. He explores the end of the duel in England, the tumultuous struggles over footbinding in nineteenth-century China and the uprising of ordinary people against Atlantic slavery. Finally, he confronts the horrors of "honour killing" in contemporary Pakistan, where rape victims are murdered by their relatives. He argues that honour, used to justify the practice, can also be the most effective weapon against it. Intertwining philosophy and historical narrative, Appiah has created a dramatic work, which demonstrates that honour is the driving force in the struggle against man's inhumanity to man.

Kwame Anthony Appiah is the president of the PEN American Center. Born in Ghana and educated in Britain, he has taught philosophy on three continents and is currently a professor at Princeton University. He is the author of Cosmopolitanism (ISBN 978 0 393 32933 9). Author website: www.appiah.net